Kate Maloy
A Stone BridgeNorth: Reflections in a New Life
Birth or Abortion? Private Struggles in a Political World
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FICTION
This novel, set in rural Vermont, is the story of seventy-five-year-old Sarah Lucas and her discovery of unguessed dimensions in her own character. It explores her life after a great loss and shows that genuine love is unquenchable.
A paperback edition will be released in Spring 2009.
Awards
Every Last Cuckoo has won the American Library Association's Reader List Award for Women's fiction.
Every Last Cuckoo was in the top five Book Sense Picks for January, 2008
Interviews
Listen to Kate's interview by Gretchen Holbrook Gerzina on The Book Show
Click here to listen to Kate speak about Every Last Cuckoo on "Between the Covers," KBOO-FM, Portland, OR.
Reviews
Publishers Weekly
Maloy explored northern landscapes and Quaker faith in her memoir A Stone Bridge North; she returns to both in her moving debut novel. When 75-year-old Sarah Lucas’s husband, Charles, succumbs to an injury at the peak of a particularly brutal Vermont winter, her worst later-life fears of physical mishap are realized. In grief, Sarah’s memories take her back to the Great Depression, when her parents generously opened their home to countless friends and relatives, and to her own regretted missteps as a parent. The chance to recreate the one experience and rectify the other arrives uninvited when a variety of lost souls—Sarah’s own teenage granddaughter; an Israeli pacifist; a devastated young mother and child—seek shelter and solace in Sarah’s too-empty home. The motley assortment of characters, many of whom have been touched by violence, deliver passionate apostrophes on peace and justice, and together Sarah and her boarders discover unseen beauty in the landscape, uncover hidden talents and develop a nurturing, healing community. Maloy’s wordplay and startling nature imagery enchant, but readers will have to decide if the spectacular climax, an expression of its characters’ principles in action, is out of place with the novel’s quiet thoughtfulness.
Library Journal
This lovely tale depicts the surprises and changes that come about with aging. Upon the unexpected death of her husband, Sarah finds strength and a capacity for caring that she never thought she would know without him. Amid bittersweet memories of her beloved Charles, Sarah becomes the unlikely den mother to an ever-growing bunch of lost souls. Surprising her wary family and even herself, she discovers a will to go on and share her home and thus her heart again. She likens the way her house fills with boarders to the way in which a cuckoo inserts itself into the nest of another bird and make its home there. Maloy (A Stone Bridge North) has created a truly engrossing novel, with situations at times both joyful and horribly sad and an entirely likable protagonist surrounded by an eclectic cast of friends and family. An excellent book club selection; highly recommended for public libraries.
Boston Globe
. . . After losing the beloved husband who shared her nest for many years, Sarah finds herself providing a home for a variety of "cuckoos"--family, friends, and strangers in need. The life she had anticipated as a solitary widow is replaced by new pleasures and frustrations. . . Maloy nicely portrays the long, imperfect, but still lusty marriage of Sarah and husband Charles, moves gracefully through the shock of loss, and charts the steps back into community. But what feels most original and moving is Maloy's sense of how Sarah sees herself connected to other generations: "How many girls and women she had been--she carried a multitude inside who shared only memory and character traits." Boston Globe, Sunday, January 20, 2008.
MSNBC.com
In grief, many people withdraw. That may have been Sarah Lucas’ first instinct after the 75-year-old resident of rural Vermont lost her husband, Charles, because of an injury during a tough winter. Instead, Sarah recalled her days growing up during the Depression, when her parents took in boarders and shared what they had. Sarah decides to do the same with a strange collection of misfits in "Every Last Cuckoo," the debut novel by Kate Maloy. Sarah’s choice to fill up her empty house brings with it some unexpected developments, each making her life richer in some way. Maloy wrote a well-received memoir called "A Stone Bridge North" about her Quaker faith and life in Vermont. "Every Last Cuckoo" is an impressive step in a new literary direction. MSNBC, Sunday, January 20, 2008.
Times-Picayune
Maloy's novel grabs the reader by the heart -- it is rare indeed to find such assured fiction about love that endures over time. As her nest expands to include the cuckoos who have sought refuge, Sarah Lucas grows in wisdom and love, and her heart heals. In this portrait of a long and loving marriage, Maloy gives us a real human family, with all its love and conflict and change, as well as a look at the richness that can come with age. [New Orleans] Times-Picayune, January 23, 2008.
More Magazine
A "Don't Miss Book," More Magazine, February, 2008The Oregonian
In an American fictional tradition that rarely addresses the elderly on any significant level, Oregon writer Kate Maloy's debut novel stands out with a 75-year-old woman as its centerpiece. . . "Every Last Cuckoo" is mostly a riveting read. Its tenderly wrought portrayal of elderly life has an unexpectedly powerful effect, revealing fictional possibilities we'd either forgotten about or never considered at all. The Oregonian, February 3, 2008.The Roanoke Times
This heartwarming tale is an excellent read and offers a multitude of illustrations of the power that simple human grace can provide to others.
People
The appeal of Maloy's debut . . . is not in its subtlety but in its conviction. People, February 4, 2008.Comments from Other Authors
"This is a splendid book, written in spare, clean prose, in which the knots of grief and complication are eased to resolution by wisdom and love." -Peter Pouncey, author of Rules for Old Men Waiting
"A tender and wise story of what happens when love lasts. This vivid and original novel seizes and surprises the reader. . . . A stunning, elegant debut."—Katharine Weber, author of Triangle and The Little Women
"A luminously textured novel that insists that grief need not diminish a life but instead can offer up a bounty of surprises, that choices don't have to narrow as we age but in fact can grow more plentiful, and finally, and most important, that love can be as open and expansive as the sky itself. I loved this rich and haunting novel.” —Caroline Leavitt, author of Girls in Trouble
"Kate Maloy's remarkable heroine [is] a woman so passionate, so intelligent, and so full of life that most readers will quickly forget that she happens to be in her seventies. This is a wonderful debut."—Margot Livesey, author of The Missing World
Questions for Readers
- We first see Sarah Lucas as she is racing into the Vermont winter woods on the heels of her dog Sylvie. What was your first impression of this 75-year-old woman?
- What do you think the woods represents to Sarah? How has her relationship to nature changed since her childhood? What caused it to change?
- Rural Vermont is rugged, poor, and sparsely populated. How do you think this environment has affected Sarah throughout her life?
- Sarah’s long marriage to Charles was mainly happy and successful, but it did have rough periods. How did the two of them weather these times without lingering resentments?
- After Charles dies, Sarah goes numb, avoids people, and doesn’t even cry. What breaks into her suspended state? Once her numbness wears off, does her grief take on new aspects and forms of expression, or does she just set grief aside and get on with things?
- What do you see as milestones on Sarah’s pathway to a new life and perhaps even a new identity? Have you ever reinvented yourself? What were your milestones?
- On impulse, Sarah takes Charles’s old camera with her on a late-winter walk. Eventually, photography helps to change the way she sees. What does she examine with her new eyes?
- Why, over time, does Sarah enjoy taking increasingly puzzling and ambiguous photographs?
- Charlotte and David respond very differently to Sarah’s photographs. How do their responses reflect their relationships with her?
- Sarah’s view of the world is somewhat altered after hearing about the murder of Tess’s husband and Mordechai’s experiences in Israel. How do these things affect Sarah’s actions and assumptions?
- Why do you think Sarah agrees to take new people into her life? For instance, why Mordechai, and then her granddaughter and the two other teenagers?
- What enables Sarah’s teenage boarders—who had been so unhappy and even angry in their own homes—to calm down in Sarah’s?
- Why do you think it upsets Charlotte when her predictable mother starts behaving unpredictably?
- What is the basis for the deepening friendship between Sarah and Mordechai?
- As the seasons change throughout the novel, so do all the characters’ lives, both inner and outer. Sarah’s changes are the most obvious and dramatic, but which of the other characters’ lives changed the most, and which changes were most vivid to you?
- What might Sarah have done differently in her encounter with Roger? How different might the outcome have been?
- Throughout this novel we see natural hazards in the form of violent storms, life-threatening cold, and animal predation. We see human hazards such as domestic violence, murder, and warfare. What is the connection? Are humans given to violence or destruction because we are part of nature? Or can we choose otherwise?
- What would Charles have thought of the Sarah we see at the end of this book?
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Work on this novel was supported in part by a grant from the Vermont Arts Council in connection with the National Endowment for the Arts.
Order Every Last Cuckoo from Amazon or BookSense.
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Kate Maloy is represented by literary agent Elaine Markson.
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A Stone Bridge North: Reflections in a New Life (Counterpoint, 2002)
This memoir connects the author's newly revived Quaker faith with her efforts to understand and celebrate radical changes in her circumstances and perceptions.
Praise for A Stone Bridge North
"[C]ompelling and exhilarating.... This is one of the best books for Quaker outreach...since I Take Thee, Serenity and Friendly Persuasion." (Friends Journal)
"I loved this heartfelt tale of Kate Maloy’s midlife leap of faith.... Her quietly philosophical reflections on love, families, friendships, nature, and her rediscovered Quaker faith make this a book to be cherished." (Dorothy Sucher, The Invisible Garden)
"[Maloy's] insistence on leading an examined life is powerful, especially in the morally difficult times we now face." (Publishers Weekly)
"An earnest, well-crafted celebration of the discovery of love, self-knowledge, and meaning." (Kirkus Reviews)
"Maloy demonstrates how to revisit the dark places in the past and emerge with new-found understanding and mercy...." (Popmatters.com)
Read excerpts and reviews at Amazon.com
Birth or Abortion? Private Struggles in a Political World
Praise for Birth or Abortion
"Abortion is as hard to talk about sensibly as to deal with politically. Kate Maloy and Maggie Patterson have helped us all. By letting us hear people on both sides tell their own stories, they move the debate beyond rhetoric and abstractions. By their scrupulous effort to listen to all sides, they also move us along politically, pointing us in a promising direction. A stimulating, provocative, thoughtful book." (Daniel Callahan, Director, The Hastings Center; author of What Kind of Life: The Limits of Medical Progress. Sidney Callahan, Psychologist; author of In Good Conscience: Reason and Emotion in Moral Decision Making.)
"The stories collected in this sensitive book take readers inside the intimate lives of their friends and neighbors, revealing the emotional and the ethical complexity of reproductive decision making. After reading this book, one better understands why abortion is truly the right choice for some women and the wrong choice for others." (Anita Allen-Castellito, Professor of Law, Georgetown University Law Center; author of Uneasy Access: Privacy for Women in Free Society.)
Read excerpts and reviews at Amazon.com
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"Some Other Day," a reflection on illness and suicide, can be seen in For Keeps, edited by Victoria Zackheim for Seal Press (October 2007). This anthology features women writers on aging, body image, loss, and acceptance.
"A Normal Woman," which discusses Kate’s handling of reproductive crises and decisions, is her contribution to Choice, an anthology edited by Karen Bender and Nina de Gramont (MacAdam/Cage, October 2007).
"Winding Threads," published in the Spring 2008 issue of The Kenyon Review, is a loosely associative meditation on place, belonging, and friendship, prompted by a 900-year-old Japanese folk art called temari.
"Sleight of Mind" appears in The Algonkian, an online literary magazine from Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, publisher of Kate’s first novel, Every Last Cuckoo. The essay talks about the evolution of the book. (Click on "Algonkian Fall 2007," then scroll down and click on Kate’s name.)
"How to Write a Novel"—another view of what led Kate to fiction writing—can be seen online at LiteraryMama,
"Changing the Mind of War," an analysis of books that have influenced Kate’s pacifism, was published in the Spring 2003 edition of The Readerville Journal, an elegant (and sadly defunct) literary magazine. The Journal is now available on-line.
Kate was invited by Largehearted Boy to create a playlist for Every
On June 15, 17, and 19, 2009, Kate will be a guest blogger at http//www.wellreaddonkey.com which "connects Kepler's Writing Group with other writers, readers, published authors and independent booksellers."
EVENTS
Readers Circle is a great place where book clubs can set up phone chats with authors.
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I am at least a third-generation word woman. When my brothers and I were small, our grandmother would ask us at breakfast for two or three things we’d like in a bedtime story that night. We expected this, and came prepared, each of us trying to outdo the others in generating impossible combinations.
"A green mug!"
"A missed train!"
"A villain’s left sideburn!"
"A fairy caught on a hook!"
"A tree an inch high!"
"A buried city!"
We never did stump Grandmother Hardy. By nightfall, she’d have created an improbable, colorful yarn from our noisy imaginings. I still have a spiral-bound collection of her stories.
My mother’s stories were more spontaneous, pulled from her daydreams and poured into our sleep. Children slept in the snapdragon flowers. Angels slid down moonbeams, into our bedrooms. A little girl got lost in the rain, because the rain changed how everything looked.
These two women were the first to show me the power of language and imagery, the first to ignite my literary sensibilities. I didn’t know this at the time, of course. It was just part of the way things were.
I began writing my own stories in the 1950s, in third grade—tales about talking animals that drew heavily on Beatrix Potter, Uncle Remus, Lewis Carroll, and Walt Disney. In junior high, I kept a diary. In high school, when the weather was warm, I would take my mother’s typewriter into the backyard and start novels that it’s just as well I never finished. In college, I studied literature, learned how its various forms are constructed, and produced short stories that I never showed anyone. I wrote poetry, I kept notebooks full of ideas. Like thousands of other book-crazy, dreaming young writers, I had considerable information, plenty of passion, not much discipline, and very little life experience.
After college, I went straight into my first job, as assistant editor of an architecture magazine. Over the next three decades, I took on more full-time and freelance jobs than I can remember, working as an editor or writer in disciplines ranging from art history to medicine, from sociology to cognitive research. Some of the work was fascinating, some of it tedious, all of it strictly for the money. Or so I thought, itching for free time and only sporadically publishing bits of my own work, here and there.
Now I can see that my jobs paid more than money. Every one of them enforced discipline and sharpened some necessary aspect of my skill. Academic work taught me how to express complex ideas in accessible language. Writing about art demanded clear descriptions, an eye for motifs, and sometimes an ability to interpret. Business writing encouraged me to make more of something than it warranted—but "spin" is still a form of invention.
Though I was perpetually restless when I worked for hire, and considered most of my jobs unimportant, I can see now that I aimed for perfection anyway. Whatever compulsion bent me to my craft through those years that felt like servitude, the habits I developed now serve me well. They have turned me into someone who hears the rhythm of every sentence, who edits relentlessly, who never stops learning about structure, narrative, argument, and nuance. My dream today, now that I’m free to write whatever I please, is to create the best work I can from the long apprenticeship I never realized I was serving. I do, finally, have enough life experience to fill some books.
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CONTACT
e-mail kate@katemaloy.com
Agent: Elaine Markson, 44 Greenwich Avenue, New York, NY 10011 / 212.243.8480
Publicity: Michael Taeckens / michael@algonquin.com / 919.967.0108 x 14